


Reds

by sicklullabies



Category: Bandom, My Chemical Romance
Genre: Alternate Universe, Cigarettes, Gen, Implied Relationships, POV First Person, Past Relationship(s), Present Tense, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-15
Updated: 2012-07-15
Packaged: 2017-11-09 23:48:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 861
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/459860
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sicklullabies/pseuds/sicklullabies
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The last time I'd seen Tracy Chandler, I don't remember her smoking Marlboro Reds.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Reds

**Author's Note:**

> In which Gerard meets an old friend for the first time and is surprised at a new habit she's picked up. Short, (bitter)sweet, and to the point.
> 
> This is the last piece of bandfic I've written to date. Originally posted on Mibba, mid-April 2012. Later removed. This was originally written as a wrap-up fic to a planned trilogy of MCR fic that I never completed. This does not come attached to a specific time period, but I'd imagine it's post-Revenge era. Gerard has been clean and sober for approximately one year.
> 
> An AU fic in which: the band failed, Gerard is working a dead-end job as an illustrator at a publishing company, and his OFC ex-girlfriend Tracy is an actress in rehearsals for a Broadway play. 
> 
> Rated Teen and Up for brief strong language and thematic elements.

The last time I’d seen Tracy Chandler, I don’t remember her smoking Marlboro Reds.

The end of it is glowing crimson as she inhales, shoving her lighter back into her jeans pocket. “How long has it been?” Tracy asks, brushing a lock of her hair out of her eyes. Her hair is long and a bright, glaring shade of red (it’s actually natural; I’ve asked) and she can never seem to keep it under control. It hangs over her shoulders like a messy, tangled curtain, the tips sweeping her mid-back when she moves her head. She exhales the smoke from her cigarette through her nose, watching with curious eyes as the wind twists and twirls it into long tendrils before carrying it away.

“Can I bum one from you?” I ask, pointedly attempting to change the subject. She pulls a carton out of her jacket pocket and holds it open. I pull out a cigarette and stick it between my lips, fumbling in my own pocket for my lighter. She chuckles and takes out her own, holding it under my cigarette and lighting the end with a small orange flame. 

“Nothing’s really changed about you, Gerard.”

I flinch at the way she says my name. She doesn’t say it with disdain, or anything even resembling it, like I’d honestly expected. It’s matter-of-fact, as if she’s talking about the weather or the play.

Actually, I’d have preferred it to be disdainful. “…Hmm?”

Tracy chuckles again, combing her fingers through her hair again, holding it in a tight grip along the sides of her head. “You’re still just the same awkward artist who dumped coffee down the front of my shirt all those years ago.” She takes one more drag off of her cigarette and tosses it on the ground, stomping it out with the heel of her sneaker. “You’re just a little older now.”

“You’re not the same at all,” I blurt out.

She blows the smoke out of her mouth this time. Instead of thin fingers of smoke, it’s a thick white cloud that drifts off into the distance in one piece. She turns to look at me, and for a split second she looks exactly the same as she did in the instant I realized that I’d fallen in love with her—only this time she’s not broken like she had been then. I’m the one who is.

“I mean,” I continue, since she’s obviously expecting me to continue, “here I am, barely making a living on my art anymore, living in a shitty little apartment with three roommates, and here you are. You’ve gone from practically a teenage girl living alone in Manhattan, your boyfriend dying on 9/11, and now…” I shake my head, laughing almost to myself. “Shit. Look at you now.” I spit the cigarette out onto the ground and grind my toe into it. “You’re just… not the same and… fuck. I can’t even tell you how.”

Tracy truly laughs this time, not just a chuckle or a giggle. “I’m sure you’ve changed too, Gee.”

She is one of the only people I know that still calls me that.

“Hell, no. Not at all,” I say, scratching the back of my neck subconsciously. She reaches back into her pocket for the cigarette carton and holds it out to me. I shake my head and she shrugs, pulling out one and sticking it between her lips.

“Yeah, I bet you have.” She pulls her lighter out and lights the tip, the orange glow of the end almost matching her hair. She pulls her jacket off and rolls it around her arm. The jacket is purple and it stands out against the black sleeve of her shirt. “You’re probably off drugs, for example.”

Good point. I’ve been clean and sober for nearly a year. “How’d you tell?”

She shrugs. “You just look healthier, that’s all.”

I don’t respond to this; I don’t think that she really even expects me to. I just lean back against the wall behind us, glancing at my watch quickly. 5:23. “You’re smoking Marlboro Reds,” I say without thinking.

Tracy pulls the cigarette out of her mouth and scrutinizes it, laughing to herself. “Guess I am.” She glances at me, head cocked to the side, her hair painfully bright against the pale skin of her neck. “Is that a problem? You smoke ‘em too.” 

“You never struck me as the type to smoke Marlboro Reds. You’re too…” I can’t think of the word I want to use.

“‘Delicate’?” She legitimately laughs again. “Shit. If you think I’m still ‘delicate’, you haven’t —”

“No, not delicate.” 

She closes her eyes, thinking hard. “Um…” 

“You,” I say definitively. “You’re just too… you. Smoking Marlboro Reds just isn’t something that you’d do.”

Suddenly she seems angry. “Guess I’m not ‘like me’ anymore, then.” She tosses the cigarette on the ground and doesn’t bother to stomp it out before turning around and walking away from me, throwing her jacket on once again.

I slowly grind my heel into it as it still smolders on the sidewalk, shaking my head at her retreating back. “I guess you’re not.”


End file.
